By CASEY SEILER State editor

Published 12:00 am, Thursday, March 3, 2011

ALBANY -- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration on Wednesday slammed Gov. Andrew Cuomo's bill to step up the timeline for establishing a statewide teacher evaluation system.

Bloomberg charged, in effect, that the governor pulled a bait-and-switch on assurances of reform to rules that require teacher layoffs to be done according to reverse seniority.

The need to amend so-called "last-in, first-out" or LIFO protections was mentioned numerous times in a press statement Cuomo's office issued late Tuesday afternoon, less than an hour after the Senate passed a Republican-backed bill that would end the supremacy of seniority as the sole criterion determining who is laid off in New York City's public schools.

Bloomberg has recently threatened more than 4,000 teacher layoffs will be needed if current LIFO rules remain in place.

Cuomo's legislation moves up the schedule for establishing evaluation standards for teachers in all subjects and grade levels. If his bill is passed, the new standards would go into effect this fall.

"The evaluations will play a significant role in a wide array of employment decisions, including professional development, tenure determinations, selection for leadership opportunities, and termination," said the statement from Cuomo's press office. "Teachers and principals with a pattern of ineffective teaching or performance could be charged with incompetence and considered for termination through an expedited hearing process."

But the bill's language -- released several hours after the initial statement -- made no provision for the use of the new evaluations in employment decisions, leaving LIFO untouched.

"The press release ... seems to be out of synch with the governor's bill," said John White, deputy chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, in a memo that was distributed to the media.

Cuomo's own quotes in the news release were more narrow in scope, noting that while it was time to move beyond the current rules, "we need a legitimate evaluation system to rely upon. This will help make a statewide evaluation system ready and allow us to replace 'last in, first out.'"

Joe Williams of Reform Education Now said in a statement, "New York can have both a comprehensive teacher evaluation system and a law in place to make sure the best, rather than just the longest-serving, teachers are kept in the classroom when layoffs are necessary. ... There's no reason we can't do both at the same time."

An e-mail from Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto suggested the administration views the integration of the new evaluations into employment rules as a matter to be negotiated between school districts and teachers' unions.

"The bottom line is we need an alternative to LIFO which is an objective evaluation system, and once that is developed we can replace LIFO," Vlasto wrote. "We do not agree, however, as our Republican colleagues advocate, that we should now disregard collective bargaining in this instance. New York is not Wisconsin."